Monday, September 28, 2009

The Joys of Not Writing

I've been having all kinds of fun getting started with my next book. Here's the progress I've been making.

First, after I identified an absolute killer of an idea, I decided to just run with it. Write like crazy, see where the idea and the characters take themselves and in a year or so, voila, I was sure to have a blockbuster.

That worked well for about 15 pages.

Index cards! That's what I needed. Create scenes on different cards, post them on the wall like a Hollywood storyboard, and it would all come together. One of my kids would surreptitiously snap a photo of that wall, which would be included in a biography many years from now: "The actual index cards King used on the actual wall of his actual office (scratch that--"study" sounds more writerly) to plan his second novel."

Outstanding approach, until I realized I was unnecessarily killing a lot of trees by throwing into the wastebasket more cards than I was posting on the wall.

An outline in Microsoft Word was next. I told myself it's important to know everything that's going to happen, every step of the way. I would outline the novel in exhaustive detail so that when it came time to actually write the thing, the words would just... flow.

I never did get the hang of outlining in Microsoft Word.

Current status: PowerPoints! A separate slide for each scene. AND I can do all sorts of worthwhile things, like add different colors for titles and bullets, insert background graphics, use WordArt to make funny shapes with different character names.

I'm having so much fun not writing I may jump out my actual office... er, study... window.